Altered Perceptions
by emptysummer
Summary: Three shot. In which Harry is not who he could have been and there is a lightness to the certainty of death. Bit of a mindfuck. HPHG
1. Mudblood Mione

First published fanfic. Review gently

Published 5/06/11

Edit published 9/06/11

* * *

><p>When Professor McGonagall shows up on Hermione Granger's doorstep to tell her about magic, she doesn't mention prejudice against muggleborns, doesn't mention fighting a war against a man who should be dead.<p>

She doesn't mention a number of things that the Hermione, who's such a_ bright _girl, should have picked on, would have picked up on if she wasn't so excited about being _magic_.

(Hermione is excited because she has always been aware of how she doesn't fit. Too bright, too clever to be anything but an outsider.)

She's eleven and excited because Diagon Alley is everything it should be, straight out of a fairytale, witches in robes, cats and broomsticks, and it's real. Then she runs into Theodore Nott, not that she know who he is yet, and he sneers. Mudblood taints the air and she's still a witch but some of the magic is gone.

If only she knew.

Her dad buys her an ice cream at Fortescue's to console her because she still doesn't belong.

She's eleven and scared for her life as a troll tries to kill her.

She knows who Harry Potter is of course. Everybody knows who he is.

She still doesn't expect him to save her. But there's a flicker of something that is not Harry as he takes down the troll and it's definitely not Harry that nods approval at her lying.

There's a litany of Slytherin's that call her mudblood after Nott but only when Harry and Not-Harry aren't around because they're all scared of him.

And then there's a stone and a basilisk's reflected eyes and it's Not-Harry that sits by her bed when Madam Pomfrey wakes her up. She hugs him and he recoils because neither Harry nor Not-Harry likes being touched.

Still it's her that breaks the contact and he asks if he can call her Mione 'cause Hermione is lovely but too long. She would have died for Harry (and Not-Harry) then.

Then there are dementors and Not-Harry floats to the surface more and more. Really she's surprised she's the only one who notices. She broaches the subject across homework in the library and Not-Harry calls her clever and they leave it at that.

She hits Malfoy because Not-Harry wants to kill him, and would have if she hadn't stepped in. When Malfoy flees (because there is no other word for it noble pureblood her ass) she glances at Harry and watches him pull himself back together.

Then they're by the lake and thirteen is far too young to die but then so is eleven and Not-Harry who is too calm for her like says in words that break the silence mutually agreed upon over homework and hot chocolate and sunny days with bare feet trailing in the lake. "I call myself Freak."

He drives off a hundred dementors and she kisses him because he is hers and she is his and that's all they need.

They are fourteen in the few happy months of that year and Ron tries calling her Mione and she flips out on him. The sound of Harry's laughter startles them both because it is like and unlike Harry's laugh. She watches him out of the corner of her eyes and sees Freak's awareness watching them and laughing.

Then Harry's name comes out of the goblet of fire and when she fearfully exchanges looks with him, she can't find a hint of Harry in his eyes and Not-Ha- Freak marches through doors that swallow him whole.

She's fourteen and learning to kill alongside Freak and what remains of Harry. Mione and Freak know that war is coming.

It's not their war.

It's Harry's parent's war and to be frank Harry doesn't even exist most of the time. Why should they fight?

Voldemort returns and Freak is the only one left after that encounter.

She tracks him down to the highest tower and they sit on the edge feet dangling, implicit between them the understanding that they could jump. She tells him about finding out about being magic.

He offers to kill Theodore Nott at the end of it, and it startles a laugh from her hysterical and high. They are children talking war, waiting for something better.

Freak (she doesn't even think of him as Harry anymore and the label Not-Harry has faded) tells her to leave after his first detention with Umbitch. She understands. Her things had been packed for months.

His hand is bleeding.

She's enrolled in a magic school in Australia three days later. When she picks up the Daily Prophet she laughs. You can go fuck your Greater Good is something Freak would say.

A week later Freak shows up at her door with a trunk, an owl cage, and a key for the house across the street. She introduces him to her parents as Harry Potter.

His hands are trembling (post-cruciatus she thinks) but besides that he's fine and when her parents leave them alone with pointed looks at her open bedroom door, his head buried in her hair.

"We're free?" She's quiet not wanting to break the moment but she has to know. She's fond of her parents even if she keeps them entirely in the dark and this move wasn't easy for them. She could hardly explain about the homicidal insane wizard after her best friend's head. Voldemort was never bothered much by collateral damage.

"We're free."

When Professor McGonagall showed up to tell Hermione Granger about magic she didn't mention prejudices or the war. McGonagall didn't mention the Greater good. She didn't mention trolls, or deatheaters or werewolves. She lied about Hogwarts being the safest place in the world. But she didn't lie about it being the most beautiful.

It's Home. And mudblood Mione found somewhere to belong.


	2. Boy Freak

Alright. Here is part one only six months later. Sorry about that to anyone following the story. Life caught up with me and things have been crazy busy. And because I hate being that author who's ANs are longer then the story and makes excuses for laziness here it is...

I own nothing.

Published 9/06/11

* * *

><p><strong>Boy Freak<strong>

Harry Potter grew up in a cupboard. It was small, dark, and safe.

It was a cage.

The wizarding world skirts around that fact because they don't want to know how their hero suffered.

It was enough that he suffered.

He was Boy (Freak) until he was five and school started and Freak thinks that maybe he's escaped the cage when he hears the name Harry.

Harry is the name is the name Freak assigns to the parts of him that the Dursleys can't touch.

Freak is expendable. Freak is the part Harry lets the Dursleys kill.

Harry buries Freak in a shack far from his safe cupboard, when Hagrid kicks down the door and tells him about magic.

Harry doesn't need Freak anymore. He's magic. He's free.

Except

Except for the first time Harry is in charge and he has no idea what he's supposed to be doing. People need him. (They want a _herosymbolmartyr_ for the cause). He (Harry) makes friends and everyone stares at him, whispering and pointing. He's supposed to be a hero, supposed to be great (but terrible).

In a grave that doesn't really exist (how could it?) Freak stirs.

Harry cracks on Halloween when a girl's scream echoing out of the bathroom. Because Harry never had to run from Dudley, Harry doesn't know how to fight. Doesn't know how to die (kicking and screaming). Harry is Freak's creation and he's weak because of it.

So he (Harry) lets Freak out and Freak doesn't hesitate, as he leaps on the troll's back.

Harry cracks, having never really existed to begin with, Freak fights, and Granger sees something in his eyes that prompts her to lie.

Freak decides he likes her. Because Granger (call me Hermione) sees when everyone else, except maybe the Slytherins (the speculative looks he receives from Nott and Zambini are interesting), are blind.

Quidditch is freedom. There's no other way to describe flying and lucking into the seeker's position is not what Freak expected when he went after Malfoy. No other first year has unrestricted access to a broom, so it makes the game, while pointless worthwhile.

Freak flies for Harry in the first game and nearly falls when Harry fights his way to the front in the middle of his nimbus being jinxed.

Harry is a Gryffindor, pure gold. Bright, flashy and soft. With enough pressure anyone can shape gold, and it dents when mishandled.

Freak is silver, hard and bright. Silver tarnishes but it doesn't bend. Doesn't break.

Hermione doesn't realize how much of the time Freak is in control.

When he looks in the mirror all he sees is Harry because there is nothing Freak desires.

Still it is Harry that leads Ron and Hermione through the challenge, Freak screaming in silent protest the whole way. Harry has no sense of self-preservation. Freak is the same but he resents dragging children into the mix.

Harry doesn't understand when Quirrel recoils from his touch. Freak does. It's Freak that latches on to him, burning him up, 'til he's ashes (ashes we all fall down).

(Voldemort lied. Or maybe he believed, Harry doesn't know which is worse. Freak knows. True Believers are worse then liars. There is no dark, no light, no power. Only magic.)

Second year is Freak slipping into the cracks Harry leaves open, as he is less sure of himself everyday.

You'll be next mudbloods. Malfoy believes it.

Hissing at Slytherins makes them jump Freak finds, so he indulges in a bit of petty childishness that ends when Zambini points out he's supposed to be a hero.

(They want a figurehead or a martyr. Freak isn't sure which but he knows enough. Heroes have a shelf life and they are only truly useful when dead.)

Hermione is found with a mirror in hand and Freak rages so loudly behind Harry's eyes that their body doubles up in pain. He spends the night in the hospital wing under observation because Madam Pomfrey can't find a physical reason for the pain that tied him up in knots.

Harry could tell her the cause and spare himself the night in the hospital.

He's hated them since he was six and they treated him for burns and the staff who were so nice, ignored signs of starvation.

(It's Freaks memory.)

But he knows how it sounds and the whispers just died down so he let's it be.

Harry lets go and Freak hisses coward.

The next night it's a little blond first year who cocks her head and tells him the nargles are infesting him.

(Luna Lovegood sees.)

Really it's not that unexpected when Ginny disappears if her brothers had paid any attention to her previously this could have been prevented.

All of it. He owes the little idiot a beating for taking away the only one Freak could name as a friend. He let's Ron rope him to the half-assed rescue mission (because honestly why wouldn't they go to a competent teacher is beyond him).

Hissing at the engraved snake feels natural. So does the sword in his hand, the phoenix's tears in his side, the basilisk's fang replacing the sword.

He asks Riddle if he believes it. Light, dark, power. Riddle thinks it's a moment of weakness.

That makes him laugh, hollow and empty. The sound echoes out of his chest. Freak hasn't been weak since he found magic and jumped a troll.

(Freak would burn the world for a reason. Just one. Riddle would have burned the world just to watch it burn.)

He has been calling her Mione in his head for months. But asking her permission is something different. He takes her stunned expression as a yes.

(Dumbledore lied too. For the greater good. And he truly believes it.)

Dementors are different. Abominations. Freak enjoys the idea of them. The reality makes him want to hurt something.

Pain. Screaming. Not Harry. Freak thinks if they had survived he would have been less... fragmented.

Divination is worthless. It amuses Freak to hear her predict his death. But breathing the smoke irritates his lungs and he ends up sleeping through half the class in the back of the room.

Mione saw him with the clearest eyes he has ever seen. And she never asked. He named her clever not for seeing but for refusing to indulge in her curiosity.

Sirius Black. Is not what they expected. Being pulled aside by Mr. Weasely gave him some clue of what was known. But Black was family. He shouldn't have betrayed them. Should have known better.

(Freak doesn't define family because he knows knows knows his frame of reference was screwed by the Dursleys.)

Freak writes Ron off as a loss after he screams at Mione and expects Harry to side with him.

Remus is what he thinks a father should be like. A bit strict, fun, patient. He (Harry) and Mione figure out Lupin's a werewolf after the second full moon. With a name like that what did he expect?

(We attacked a teacher. We attacked a teacher.)

(Just Snape Mione.) Freak is out to play.

Dementors by the lake. Circling. They take part of Sirius's soul. Freak wonders abstractly what would the effects of that be. Harry goes into full on panic mode. Thirteen is young for death.

(Nobody is too young to die.)

Waking in the hospital wing is disorientating. Especially with Dumbledore's eyes twinkling above him.

Timeturners and what the hell Mione? later, they watch dementors descend on their unconscious bodies.

Young for death but unafraid.

(I call myself Freak.) Keep the words as casual as possible before performing the impossible.

She kisses him. Because she can.

Dumbledore's wise old man act puts Harry in awe and Freak snorts in disgust.

(If he knew half as much as he pretended he would recognize there was no savior. The Greater Good makes Dumbledore blind.)

Fourth year. This will be the year Freak doesn't spend the last week in the hospital. That's the goal. Funny story really.

They are good at magic. Bred for it. It is a pity Freak deemed them unworthy of saving. Magic is truly extraordinary.

Fourteen and laughing. Harry sleeping in the far corner of their mind. Mione hitting Ron every time he calls her anything but Hermione.

Until Halloween.

Champion.

There are scars on his back. Multiple overlaid scars, the impression of broken wings. He never once dared to show Mione and no one else is high enough in his regard to be shown them willingly.

The dragon adds another scar to his ever-growing collection.

Freak crushes Harry. Ruthlessly because Harry is Freaks creation, from a name he didn't even recognize as his own.

(The silence following the teacher calling Potter, Harry is deafening in the absolute change implied in it.)

Harry does not have the skills or the will to survive what's to come. (You haven't even begun.) So as they learn to kill Freak only gets stronger and Harry only gets weaker.

Mione accompanies him to the Yule Ball. Afterwards they take the bottle of firewhiskey they bought from the twins and drink by the common room fire, curling on the couch, trashed, and so beautifully _young_. Freak never had a childhood and Mione always was acutely aware of how she didn't quite fit.

In the maze. Freak lets Cedric take the cup simultaneously. (Still a Hogwarts champion.)

He regrets that. (Kill the spare.)

(There is always a choice.)

(Most of the time there are no good ones.)

He lets Harry (a distant dream of _normality_) go in a graveyard, surrounded by Death Eaters, because the very idea of being normal (average) is laughable.

Freak runs because that is what he's good at, Voldemort's offer echoing.

On the tower, they sit bare feet skimming air, as they once did on the lake. Mione talks to fill the silence, magic, mudblood, and the ice cream her dad bought her to console her because she still doesn't fit. Didn't fit until a troll tries to kill her and Freak saves her. (She doesn't need to say the words.)

He offers to kill Nott for her. (Neither does he.)

He knows that fifth year will be the end. (Nothing ever ends.)

That summer before he gets isolated at the Dursleys he draws her aside. Whispers because he knows they're being watched (and because she shivers slightly at his breath on her neck).

(Find another school)

The tentative reaching out to Riddle hurts.

At Grimmauld Place she sighs quiet against his cheek in the first hug she throws at him (Australia)

Later (Why?)

(English speaking, good schools, huge country. Lots of space.)

He can't stand being confined since he's learned to fly. She remembered. He thinks this is what family is.

They go back to Hogwarts because it's home. Even just for a while longer. He flies and she combs the stacks tracing the spines of books that have become familiar friends. They walk by the lake and roam the castle after curfew. They drink tea with Hagrid, spar verbally with Malfoy, venture in the forbidden forest, climbing massive fallen trees. He shows her the Chamber of Secrets and they seek out the Shrieking Shack for the simplistic J+L graffiti craved on walls.

It's peaceful. Until Umbridge and detention. He tells her to leave. (Another scar to add to the collection.).

A week's head start they agreed. The school's students whisper. And the school hums sad and slow because Hogwarts knows.

A week. Ginny throws herself at him. Ron invites him to play chess for the first time in years. And Luna and Neville quietly pack their things.

He walks out of Hogwarts. Away from home. Trunk floating behind him. The note he tacks to the notice board over educational degree number 26 says You can go fuck your Greater Good.

The letter he sends to the Daily Prophet is longer, more detailed and tells them exactly what he thinks of adults who rely on an abused child to save them. (It concludes with the same line.)

Riddle can't figure out how Freak got there which makes the offhand crucio not unexpected.

(The offer still stands.)

(Yes. Australia.)

Freak asks Riddle if he believes it. Light, dark, power.

(Yes)

A day later he's standing outside a two-story house whitewashed, with a red door, a tree with a hammock underneath. Three blocks from the ocean, and ten miles from open plains.

He has the key to the house across the street in his pocket and Hedwig circles overhead.

Knock.

(It's just magic. Which tastes like sunset on the breath, inhale just a little bit for no fear of death.)

That's where the wizarding world went wrong.

* * *

><p>Thanks to Xelan, almac1991 and Nothorse for reviewing. Kudos to the people who catch the childhood rhyme, Buffy reference or song lyrics.<p> 


	3. Greater Good

Greater Good

For goddessa39, without whom I suspect that this would have stayed in fic limbo for at least another three months.

At one point I had 1600 words that made no sense at all so I deleted all of it except the first sentence and started over. It was one of the most painful things I ever did. Truth was my first attempt to write this. Don't ask me how I went from Dumbledore to Ginny. I don't know myself.

Gay!Dumbles is technically canon so I'm running with it.

Published: 12/07/11

* * *

><p>If wishes were horses then beggars would ride and Albus would have found absolution in a young man's eyes. He doesn't. Gellart's eyes are still shining and blue as he speaks hate. Funny you that never realized before.<p>

It starts somewhere else. And ends another place entirely.

Albus is eight and in love with the muggle girl who lives across the street, five houses down. You show her magic pulling little flames into existence from nowhere. She is taller then you and she knocks your hand away as you offer them to her. She calls you a freak and runs away crying. You will regret this moment for the rest of your life. Not because of what occurred then but because of what happens next.

Your mother makes you apologize to the girl (whose name you cannot remember, but should given what she sets in motion.) and your mother chats with her mother on the front porch when you apologize for being a wizard. The words taste like ashes on your tongue. You resent her, your mother for making you apologize to a muggle.

Your mother is proud for all that she is muggleborn. She slaps you when you return home, tells you not to ever put her in a position where she must apologize to a muggle again.

You learned secrets and lies at her knee and you are terribly proud. Why not? You are a wizard a strong one if the early displays of magic decide anything.

You're a goddamn fool. It takes you six decades to realize that and at that point your path is set in stone, lined with granite.

That muggle girl, the one you loved, she tells her older brother about the flames dancing on your palm. He and his friends watch your house. They are teenagers large and intimidating. Ariana was playing in the backyard dancing pulling ribbons of magic to dance with her. They swirled and sparkled. Your father was at work, your mother apparated to Diagon Alley, leaving you in charge. Abe and you are in the house and your little sister is alone.

You don't even hear her screams.

It's not guilt that consumes you. It's disgust. You have no sister. And then you have no father.

You go to Gryffindor because the hat believes you to be too shortsighted for Slytherin, too ambitious for Ravenclaw. Hufflepuff was never even an option.

You are powerful and you devote yourself to the pursuit of power. (Looking back you wonder what exactly differentiates you from the Dark Lords you devote your life to putting down. You don't think about this for very long content in the knowledge of your superiority.)

You have no sister. But when you return home during breaks you sit beside your sister and watch her knit (one, purl one). Aberforth is her favorite brother and you are barely tolerated but you can watch her knit for hours. She puts her magic into it and it makes her less volatile. For Christmas and your birthday you receive socks. Thick woolen socks the patches of individual threads gleaming like gold or giving off glitter or color-changing continuously. You have no sister.

At Hogwarts you network. Find the connections necessary to place yourself highly in life. By the time you are fifteen the school's social life revolves around you. By the time you are sixteen you are a black hole dragging in everything in Hogwarts. You taste life through the comforts your allies (you never call them friends) bring to you. This is only right. You are stronger then them. They bring you books, music, wine, food, gifts, (_the whole world. All you have to do is smile._)

You are likeable. It's easy enough. A smile and twinkling eyes, a couple lines of perfectly generic advise. Your hair doesn't quite work with the image you are cultivating but the contrast allows you breaks from character not that they appear often. Ginger hair skips grey entirely, going straight to shining white. In fifty years the image you will make will be striking.

The hat called you shortsighted. Sixteen and arrogant you believe you've outrun prophecy.

Sixteen and arrogant and one of your friends offers you a Dark Arts tome.

Seventeen and the world at your feet, you buried your mother yesterday and you feel nothing.

Abe resents you. Ariana is mad. Is any wonder that you try to avoid your house as much as possible? You meet him through a mutual acquaintance and he smiles much the same way you do at those you are cultivating. Gellert Grindelwald has plans. You listen. His plans are brilliant. He intends to change the world with plans so much grander then your own. You would have changed the world one person at time. He intends to change the world all at once in a stroke of magic and power and create something… _beautiful_.

The ends justify the means and you are working for the greater good.

When you are together power rolls off you, bouncing back and forth, magnified. It's like heat, the suns rays on your face, matches burning close to fingers.

He is beautiful. Handsome and clever and when he smiles he is beautiful. You love him three days after meeting him. You are _in love_ with him within a week. You would follow him anywhere within two.

That summer you are inseparable. He is cultivating you, you realize this but you don't care. It feels genuine when you are with him.

You cross at least four of your personal and moral boundaries during those sun soaked days. If only it was always like this. Then you introduce him to your family. Abe resents him. In the few moments when he can catch you without Gellert, he points out all the facts you conveniently ignore. Gellert was expelled from Drumstrang for experimenting with the blackest of arts. He had a thing for muggle baiting. You take to pretending Abe does not exist.

Far harder is ignoring the study Gellert puts into your little sister. (You have no sister.) Ariana is pretty, brilliant in her moments of lucidity. They become more common when Gellert is with her. She is broken and proof of everything Gellert believes in, a reason for hate. Proof muggles are lesser creatures to have broken her.

You watch him watch your sister (_insane broken beautiful_) spin. He combs his long fingers through Ari's hair and you ache because he loves her. You hate your sister, an unworthy feeling.

The revolution. It was for her. For a century you try to lay your guilt on your sister's grave. Bitter and jealous with a lifetime of mistakes behind you, you make the same mistakes again. History repeats with you aiding it.

Your sister died in the summer. She's been dead for ten years but she died in the summer, this summer in 1899. The fight is. Abe angry over the idea of them bringing Ariana on their quest. Gellert insistent that she comes with you. She will be safe and when it's over she won't have to hide. You say nothing standing between the two. Abe calls him cruel and manipulative and you step in knowing that it is true. You still take Gellerts side.

Gellert and you against your younger brother. He does not stand a chance. Words are thrown a lifetime of resentment between the two of you then curses. Gellert watches triumphant. This was his aim all along.

You never saw her running down the stairs. This is truth. Your spell kills her, not Gellert, as you will later tell the world.

Your sister is dead, fallen back, her expression peaceful. Her hair spreads around her a halo and the grief in Gellert's eyes is real, the first uncalculated emotion you have ever seen from him. Your sister is dead. She died in the summer but you have had no sister for the past ten years. You just burned all your bridges in a fifteen-minute fight.

Your brother will never forgive you and neither will Gellert. In this they are united.

You nearly threw away what you built for him. For easy smiles and calculating blue eyes and a man in love with your little sister.

Sometime during this summer the Greater Good has been engrained into your patterns of thought. You move on with a crooked nose, a gift from your brother who is unlikely to ever speak to you again.

Life is easy for you. Perpetual motion eases your heart so you make a point of becoming great. Perhaps one day it will be enough. (Enough to bring Gellert back to you.) To the west there are whispers of a man rising.

He does not care. Then again Dumbledores have always been particularly good at lying to themselves.

Albus takes the job at Hogwarts the same year Gellert begins his campaign to change the world. He is likable and easygoing. His students love him and he plays chess his students, pointing them towards jobs where their aptitudes will serve them well. His favorite students he points towards Germany and rumors of power.

You give Gellert two decades because you want to see this world that they would have built.

You meet Tom Riddle in between, and for a moment history swims forward and you see yourself in this handsome, clever, charming boy. More importantly you see Gellert in this boy.

You are too harsh. In retrospect you know this. You saw the fading bruise on his face and said nothing. You allowed this to happen because you could not find it in you to care for a desperate, angry, manipulative child. You are doomed to repeat your mistakes, the hat's prophecy.

You reject the boy and isolate him during the summer with a few well-placed words to Dippet. You try to limit the harm he will do and only increase it. If you can cared for him, seen him placed where he would be cared for you could have changed the future. Instead you repeat the past.

Time slips into three decades and is halfway to four before he can bring himself to face the man he loved.

For the greater good, Gellert says, smirk still firmly fixed upon his face. The signs of age on his face are few and far between. He asks how your brother is doing. He says nothing of your sister.

The fight is brutal and angry. You were betrayed but you cannot bring yourself to kill him. You are sixty and your hair is white, and you offer him imprisonment in his tower. Time to ruminate on his regrets. He only has one. (A girl with golden hair and blue eyes similar to yours.)

Tom Riddle graduates the year you defeat Gellert (who never becomes Grindelwald to you.) and disappears. You are weary but still find the time to go to Nurmengard on the day she died with intention of hurting him. On this day when he was free there were always flowers on your sister's grave.

Life goes on and passes you by.

In the seventies Voldemort rises on the ashes of Tom Riddle. You have trained a generation and they belong to you body and soul. You have made your mistakes twice and you will not see them repeated.

So you organize a group, call them Order of the Phoenix for the shining white wizard you have trained yourself to be. If only they realized just how close you came to being the enemy. They belong to you petty and brilliant and young. You will (have) change(d) the world.

You love them as your children and think it is only right to keep them in the dark because is that not what parents do? Lie to protect their children. It is incredibly easy to contain information and you alone can see the chessboard sprawled between Tom and yourself.

Halloween the year you turn one hundred is an anomaly. Unpredicted. You do not like the feeling of surprise.

So you overturn your lieutenant's objections and place the boy with his muggle relatives with the understanding that he will have ten dark and difficult years ahead of him. Abused children make the best followers and the boy needs to follow you to his fate.

You train your second generation waiting for your weapon to be welcomed back into the fold.

The first time you see him in ten years the impression of a bruise on high cheekbones is fading, much like Tom Riddle. For a moment he sees nothing in Harry's eyes and is terribly afraid. He cannot afford another deviation from the game.

Then the awareness fades from Harry's (Lily's) eyes (another terribly cruel manipulation of his) and he is left yet another empty-headed child in awe of his surroundings. You catalog the shift and observe. But seems to be an outlier as the boy remains unaware of everything, heedless of the casual way he threw Harry into the path of Hagrid and the Weasleys, to ensure a Gryffindor saviour.

The mirror shows only Harry and this frustrates you. He is not supposed to be happy. The other option does not occur to you until it is far too late.

You leave the school purposely on the night an attempt on the stone will be made, a test for your pawn (who thinks itself a knight). You have been dangling hints in front of him all year. The run goes better then you thought it would. Harry proves himself, Voldemort is banished another year, and all went to plan. You give Harry meaningless words. Perfectly empty advice, something you perfected while still a teenager.

It is incredibly easy manipulating this boy. Secrets and lies learnt at your mother's knee and you create something extraordinary. A hero.

You are not certain when exactly you realize his movements do not match with your intended plan. Perhaps it was third year when he saves Sirius Black (who you condemned to Azkaban because he would have interfered with your plans for the chosen one). Sirius was supposed to die then and prevent Harry from freeing himself from the Dursleys. Or even earlier when he chooses the muggleborn girl over the youngest son of the Weasleys.

No, that isn't right. You ignored them as minor breaks from plan (_you call it free will and allow it when it doesn't change the plan_).

You notice only when the complete break occurs. By that point it is too late. Granger leaves the school and you point the Weasleys in his direction, still aware of what's to come.

The note says, "You can go fuck you Greater Good."

A lifetime of mistakes compounded by seven words. A magically powerful number.

You used the phrase Greater Good only once around Harry. He extrapolated from that your plan, thoughts, history even. You wonder where he learned to disassemble so thoroughly.

You'll ask him when you find him.

* * *

><p>Damn. It's finally FINALLY written and sorta cohesive and not awesome or anything but ok. Um. Let's see I own nothing. Dumbledore is difficult for me to write because I'm very conflicted about him. Rowling said he was the "epitome of goodness" but his actions are very much that of a manipulators. He is difficult to write and the black-white morality of the Harry Potter books, leaves his character a bit flat so I gave him a bit of nuance.<p>

I specifically didn't go into Dumbledore learning Dark Arts because I've read the fanfic theories and only a few do it justice, none of the ones I like would have worked well with this story. Just keep in mind that he did.

This concludes the main story of Altered Perceptions. Other perspectives might be posted later as individual stories. One is already up (that's Truth if your interested.)

Comments are useful, flames are not. Give me your thoughts I'd like to hear them


End file.
